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Latest post Fri, Jun 13 2008 12:05 PM by Mr Wordy. 4 replies.
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Anonymous  +  526509 Thu, 12 Jun 08 11:18 PM
Hi,
Could I be able to use what I call "elaborate" punctuation in emails, like using semicolons and dashes?? Can you correct this?

eg,
I was expecting your email, Jane; I am glad  to receive it. I have one question though: did you decide on your wedding date? Are you marrying the dashing fellow you were with at our high shool reunion few weeks ago? If that's him -- you are a lucky girl. He looked so nice and on top of that, he looked so gentlemanly (when and how can we use this "-ly" words??). Please let me know the details. Bye.
Mr Wordy  +  526518 Thu, 12 Jun 08 11:58 PM

I just spotted a couple of typos (probably), one double space, and a couple of places where I'd use commas.

I was expecting your email, Jane; I am glad to receive it. I have one question though: did you decide on your wedding date? Are you marrying the dashing fellow you were with at our high school reunion a few weeks ago? If that's him, you are a lucky girl. He looked so nice and, on top of that, he looked so gentlemanly. Please let me know the details. Bye.

Proper punctuation in emails is to be commended, and you should punctuate them just as you would any other piece of text. For dashes I often use two hyphens (--), as you have. (Not only are proper dashes a pain to enter, but I'm never entirely confident that they will be rendered correctly in whatever system the recipient is using.)

Many "-ly" words are adverbs, but "gentlemanly" is an adjective. The way you've used it is fine -- just as "he looked so handsome" is fine. What you can't say is something like "he looked at me gentlemanly" (intended to mean "in the manner of a gentleman") because this sentence needs an adverb (as in "he looked at me cautiously").

Joined on Tue, May 27 2008
Senior Member 2,359
Native British English speaker
Marius Hancu  +  526521 Fri, 13 Jun 08 12:34 AM
 >For dashes I often use two hyphens (--)

I agree with Mr. Wordy on this in terms of e-mail. The (em)-dashes can be properly entered only in more complicated systems/applications. Mind you, in order to save energy, bandwidth and storage, I prefer plain text e-mail to the heavy thing.  

Joined on Wed, Apr 26 2006
Veteran Member 11,673
Anonymous, 1 yr 161 days ago
Thank you. Why the phrase "a few" is needed before "weeks"? Can we use "few" weeks to note our dissatisfaction with the number of weeks or to denote a negative sense??eg, few pens
Thank you.
Mr Wordy  +  526779 Fri, 13 Jun 08 12:05 PM

Anonymous
“Thank you. Why the phrase "a few" is needed before "weeks"? Can we use "few" weeks to note our dissatisfaction with the number of weeks or to denote a negative sense??eg, few pens
Thank you. ”

Yes, exactly -- dissatisfaction or a negative sense (fewer than might be expected/wanted, a notably small number, etc.)

There have been a few weeks better than this one = there have been some better weeks; this isn't the best.

There have been few weeks better than this one = this is one of the best weeks; hardly any weeks have been better.

Same with pens, and all sorts of other nouns.

But "few weeks ago" is unnatural. So, you wouldn't say "at our high school reunion few weeks ago", even if for some reason you wanted a negative sense.

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